Documenting Air Force History

Ray Puffer asks, "Can anyone dispute that I had the most interesting job in the entire Air Force?"

Or the time spent in the altitude chamber, getting qualified for the occasional flight to come an historian’s way. Most striking of all, however, was getting to ride along in one of our C-135 tankers slated to refuel an SR-71. Lying on my belly beside the boom operator, we watched the incredible bird bank steeply and slide into position behind the tail…and realized that it was a woman’s voice coming from the Blackbird. Marta Bohn-Meyer, riding as crewman in NASA Dryden’s bird. After taking on fuel, the bird slid back and seemed to stand on its tail as it went for altitude. From the tanker’s cockpit: “Has she entered her high-Alpha, high-energy phase yet?” And the other pilot sighed “Yeah.”